JS: Not exactly. This teaching may represent a restoration period for the existing church. Just as his teachings were a restoration of the Christian Church.

You see, when Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon, it ushered in a new honey cycle for Christianity, if only briefly. The same thing happened when Christ's teachings brought about the New Testament, which ushered in a honey cycle for the faith of the Old Testament. Both of those cycles have long since faded. The time may be right for another restoration period.

Q: I've heard you use these terms before. Honey cycle, steel, and all that. Is that what you mean by honey? It refers to restoration? Or, the period of reinvigoration in a faith when a new prophet comes along, like Jesus or Joseph?

JS: Yes.

Q: And the steel cycle refers to, I suppose, the period that follows after a long time, when the ideas aren't as fresh anymore, and the faith seems to have lost sight of its original purpose? Such as through overly strict rules, misinterpretation of original ideas, church corruption, and things of that nature?

JS: Yes, exactly.

Q: I see. Can I come back to that? It's interesting, but I'm most curious about your experience with Joseph.

JS: Absolutely. What would you like to know?

Q: When did he first come to you in a dream?

JS: About five years ago.

Q: And that's when he gave you your new name? Was giving you the Smith name meant to imply a sort of spiritual succession?

JS: That's right. It was my first dream, when he gave me the name. But there was a lot more. I learned much about Joseph in that first dream, things never recorded by history.

Q: And you have no doubt it was really him, speaking to you through a dream?

JS: No doubt whatsoever. It's happened many times since.

Q: What else did he say?

JS: First he told me who he was. You see, I knew nothing of Mormonism at the time. So the name Joseph Smith didn't mean anything to me. It was like an ordinary man visiting me in an especially vivid dream. Then he told me who I was, or I mean, gave me my new name. I intuitively understood this to mean our link wasn't familial, but spiritual. At that point, I also intuited this man had been dead for a long time. And yet, he wasn't.

Q: So when you say you knew nothing of Mormonism–

JS: Nothing at all. When I woke up, I understood the dream was significant, so I looked up his name and read many things about Mormonism and Joseph's history. Of course I had heard of Mormonism. I just never knew the name of its founder. I had no reason to. That wasn't my background.

Q: So the dream. Joseph gave you the name, and–

JS: He told me some parts of his story. Such as when he was very young, he had a dream similar to the one I was having. His dream included Jesus. So I understood this to be a religious dream, even though I was never a religious person. The conversation that followed was extensive, but mostly practical. There wasn't much more that was religious in nature. He covered matters that were important during his time, thoughts about family, and the difficulties of leading people and trying to do the right thing. It was very conversational, and I couldn't remember many specifics when I woke up. I would remember a lot more of what he said in future dreams, because they were more important.

But there was one thing he said from that first dream which I never forgot. It was still ringing in my ears when I woke up.

"As man now is, God once was. As God now is, man may be."

Q: That's about Exaltation, right?

JS: Yes.

Q: Why do you think he told you that in the first dream?

JS: Because it was his most important message. Upon his death, Joseph Smith became the Exalted Creator of another universe. That's where he is now. That's where he's been speaking from when visiting my dreams.

Q: He told you this?

JS: Yes.

Q: So, to be clear, that is the belief which says if you die - I mean, someone who lives properly, according to Mormon principles - you become God, or a god, as it were. And you can create planets and such, and live there with your family forever?

JS: Yes, that's partially true. But I should clarify.

First, it isn't so limited. You don't become a god after death, you become the God - the one true Exalted Creator of that universe. But only to the extent that the Exalted Soul already was God, which has now had the veil of Their mortal limitations lifted. Second, the Exalted Creator doesn't go around creating planets, or even creating anything really, within the universe They go to. The Exalted Soul creates an entirely new universe upon death of the body. It's a dreamlike reflection of Their most intimate understanding of paradise. Or if not paradise per se, then some reality they were heavily drawn to in life, as was Joseph's case. The Exalted Creator then, in a sense, presides over this creation as God for as long as it remains manifest.

Also, this transformation is not at all dependent on any sort of morality or proper conduct as described by any church. That's all nonsense. There is no such thing as living properly, in any cosmic or spiritual sense. Everyone is already living properly.

Q: They are?

JS: Yes.

Q: It sounds like, then, you're discrediting one tenant of Mormonism, while validating another. The Exaltation part is true, but the part about doing all the right things to reach the heavenly reward, that's not true?

JS: Exactly. It's not true. Exaltation is available to anyone, as long as they were meant for it. Or, rather than meant for it, you could also say drawn to it. But what makes them meant for it is difficult to say. There aren't really any rules to it, none that the human mind can comprehend at least. But it certainly has nothing to do with morality or conduct.

Q: So how many are meant for it?

JS: A lot of people, but again, it's hard to say. It was never fully spelled out in my visions, nor do I think it can be in terms we understand as mortals. But it's a lot of people, I know that.

Q: How can we know who is meant for it?

JS: No one can, except for the person who experiences the sudden shift in awareness while living, what I call becoming primed for Exaltation. Then you know deep down, intuitively, that you will be Exalted upon death, but you can't explain or prove it to anyone. This happened to Joseph, becoming primed, in the final moments of his life. As he was falling, or so he told me.

But for those who wonder if they're meant to be primed for Exaltation some day, there are some good indicators. Just being attracted to the concept is a major indicator. I would say even hearing about it is a good sign. After all, we live in another's Exalted Creation. Everything happens for a reason. Everything, every idea you come into contact with, there's purpose to it. You can view it as foreshadowing.

Q: The fact that I'm hearing this answer now may be foreshadowing the fact that I am destined for Exaltation?

JS: I think that is very likely, yes. But I can't know for sure. No one can.

Q: Okay. But getting back to Mormonism, you say Exaltation, at least the way you describe it, is real. But the morality part of earning, or say, achieving it, that's a myth.

JS: Yes.

Q: Is there anything else about Mormonism you can confirm is real, according to your visions of Joseph?

JS: Almost nothing, no.

Q: Nothing?

JS: As far as I can tell, virtually none of its other claims have much merit, except in a way which would need some further explanation. Such as the historical accounts contained within the Book of Mormon Joseph wrote. None of that actually happened.

Q: It didn't?

JS: No, not in this universe.

Q: Then, in another?

JS: Yes. But we'd have to get into the way Exaltation works to begin making sense of it. They weren't lies. Joseph wasn't lying about that stuff. He did begin telling lies out of what he thought was necessity, but not about history. He saw the history through visions, but he didn't know what he was seeing at the time.

Q: I see. So what was he lying about?

JS: Many things. Too many to list. But this turned out to be a necessary consequence, or so he believed, of the need to fortify his restoration effort - to keep people following, believing, obeying rules, making money, and so on. Such fortification efforts are inevitable when the restoration of a faith begins to enter its steel cycle. For Joseph, this began to happen almost immediately.

Q: Then, when Mormon authorities of the past, or the priesthood - when they decreed that it's necessary to behave properly to attain Exaltation, were they also lying?

JS: That's a little different. I wouldn't say those are lies exactly, but they are definitely falsehoods. There's a fine line between telling lies which become canonized into scripture, and the accumulation of misleading ordinances which is a natural process as a faith spirals deeper into its steel cycle. But there were many times when Joseph himself was fully aware he was telling lies in order to continue his work. And ultimately, he was right. It would have collapsed quickly without the intentional introduction of such steel bindings. The honey cycle is almost always fleeting.

Q: I think I understand. You're saying Mormonism, or rather, any faith, if it exists long enough, its canon necessarily has to be built on a certain amount of lies or distortions. And you say that not only is this inevitable, but it's a critical part of the way the faith sustains itself over time. And that's what you call the steel cycle?

JS: Yes, exactly. You've got it.

Q: But the honey cycle, as you call it, that's the moment of a faith, or a particular moment of restoration like when Joseph began having visions - that's when the truth is still considered most important? That is, when there's still the most wind in the sails of the restoration, when it's still the most inspiring, or I guess, still feels like there's a divine power reinvigorating what the previous canon was supposed to stand for all along?

JS: Correct.

Q: And that's what this is?

JS: What?

Q: Your teaching here. Your visions and everything. This sounds like it's supposed to be the honey cycle for Mormonism. And perhaps all of its current denominations as well, and the canon described by the Book of Mormon and related texts.

JS: That's exactly what it is. Or rather, what it may become.

Q: So it's a restoration? Of Mormonism?

JS: Yes.

Q: And how long will it last? I mean, by your own terms. When you talk about steel cycles, you say they're inevitable. Actually you seem to say they are necessary.

JS: They are.

Q: So how long will this honey cycle last?

JS: As long those concerned with the truth are able to prevent the bindings of steel from setting in. But as you point out, it's inevitable. Even for this restoration.

Q: But isn't there an advantage here?

JS: What's that?

Q: I suppose it would be, the fact that you're even mentioning it as a possibility. The fact that your restoration accounts for it. Wouldn't awareness of it change the equation? As in, maybe delay it longer than usual?

JS: Perhaps you're right. I don't know.

Q: Maybe this time it will never happen at all?

JS: No. It is inevitable. Honey becomes steel, which gives way to new honey when the time is right. This is the cycle. You can't stop it. But you can accept it as a means of understanding this Exalted Creation better. That's all we are here for, really.

2. History

Q: Can I go back to some of the stories in the Book of Mormon? The ones that came from Joseph's vision, stuff about Jesus coming to America, and all these people in the story, like the Nephites and Lamanites.

JS: Yes. What about it?

Q: You said those events didn't take place in our world.

JS: They didn't.

Q: So, nothing described in that book, in terms of recorded and unrecorded events of history, happened in our past? Nothing at all?

JS: No, nothing whatsoever. But they weren't total fabrications either. Joseph believed in those stories with all his heart. It's what made him compelling as a leader, and others believed him. He was believable because he believed it himself.

Q: Because they were visions, not lies? From a different universe?

JS: Yes.

Q: The one created through his Exaltation?

JS: That's right. He had visions from the future, in a sense. But to be clear, his universe is not in our future. It doesn't work that way. His universe exists right now. It always has. All of these universes are concurrent. The timeline within our universe has no relevance or correlation to the timelines in any others.

Q: How many are there? Universes?

JS: Infinite.

Q: I see. So Joseph's universe, going back to what you said about Exaltation - that it's something like an approximation of paradise? Or his personal understanding of what a paradise should look like?

JS: Yes.

Q: That would mean Joseph's view of paradise included all these stories about Jesus coming to America.

JS: Right.

Q: But, what I don't understand is, how does that reality count as a paradise? I guess it's interesting. It's an interesting story, I mean. But there were still a lot of problems in all those stories in the Book of Mormon. Like, Joseph's Exalted form created a universe that still has problems, right?

JS: Absolutely. This is one of the misunderstandings about Exaltation. It's a very common point of confusion, this notion about paradise. It doesn't at all mean a perfect universe, not by human standards. It doesn't suggest a universe that is free of problems or suffering. That would be impossible. The universe would collapse if it didn't have all these polarities which contribute to the suffering of mortals. Competition over resources, for instance. Life needs that to evolve from simple organisms. It couldn't exist otherwise. So a universe without suffering, as humans define it, can't exist. But God doesn't view things the same way. The Exalted Creator, or God, sees all of it as necessary to keep manifestation going, to keep it from stagnating and then dissolving into nothing, like the end of a dream.

Q: That makes sense. Which brings me back to Joseph's vision of paradise. So you're saying, paradise doesn't mean a universe without suffering, and all these other complex human problems. I can accept that, but it's funny. Well, funny might not be the right word, but it really just sounds like Joseph's paradise was a world almost exactly like this one, but with a few minor changes in the grand scheme of things. There's still a planet called Earth, there's still an America, there's still a Jesus. But in his vision, just a few key facts were rearranged to tell a story that seemed to suit the purpose of his restoration movement at that exact point in history.

JS: You're very close to getting it. That's exactly how Exaltation usually works. The new universe is almost always very similar to the current one. Because why would a human bother to intuitively yearn for anything so fundamentally different from what they already understand? The fixes they envision are typically going to be minor changes to their current reality, because ultimately, most humans are very fond of their current reality. The fault they find is with the details. They start imagining, wouldn't it be great if this particular thing happened in my current reality, or this one great man came along to steer us away from darkness? If the paradise they envision is too different, it doesn't sound that appealing anymore. Different is scary. Familiar, but better, is ideal.

Joseph, who was a very young man at the time of his visions, was not one to visualize a beautiful new reality that differed much from the reality he grew up with. He was very normal in that way. But he was surrounded by a world plagued by the shortcomings of the religious orthodoxies of those times, which were dense with the bindings of steel - what he saw as corruption and distortion of the faith's original purpose. So at an intuitive level he could imagine what would make the world better, and that included visions of a story that could serve as the basis for a restoration movement. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the thought, wouldn't it be great if the stories of Christianity's past were different in certain ways, to illuminate the original spirit of the teachings for people of the present day?

Of course, without the visions he had, this just would have remained a fantasy. But the visions coming directly from the world of his future Exaltation gave him enormous conviction that these events had really taken place. It was this conviction which allowed him to act, which led to the establishment of the church.

Q: Then there's almost something circular about the nature of Exaltation. The desire to see those things during life fuels their appearance in the new universe after death, almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

JS: It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's exactly what it is, especially in a case like Joseph's. He saw the world of his own Exaltation, mistook it for the past of this world, and began to have conviction in it. This conviction translated into a desire for it to be true. So the world in which all of those events played out exactly as he saw them, in truth, was paradise to Joseph. So it served as the basis for his Exalted Creation, which he could then observe as its God, and participate in.

Q: Participate in?

JS: Yes. Through incarnation.

Q: I didn't know this was a feature of Exaltation.

JS: It's actually the only way an Exalted Creator can even be aware of Their own creation. Without a physical form of some kind, there's no mind. Without mind, there's no way to understand all the concepts and forms which we use to comprehend the universe. There's a big misunderstanding of a formless God floating out there somewhere, which is also somehow able to know the creation. That's not possible. It needs forms and structures to make sense of anything, to allow the basis for understanding. In fact, this is the main reason for creation - to give God something to become aware of within Itself, as well as providing Itself with physical mechanisms to make such perception and understanding possible.

Q: I see. Well, that's a very interesting piece in all this. I'll have to revisit that, but I wanted to keep on with my train of thought here–

JS: Sure.

Q: Because I'm still trying to pin down how Exaltation works in your view. I have a better idea now, at least of what you mean by certain things, like "paradise." It's not that literal. It's not what the average person would describe as paradise if you asked them.

JS: No, it's not.

Q: And you say that's because a universe without problems isn't possible. And you said a couple things about that, about why it's not. Such as that the universe couldn't exist without problems. It would collapse, or vanish, I think you said. Could you elaborate?

JS: Where the human mind exists, problems are always going to exist regardless. You could wish away disease or such, and the mind would just factor in the nonexistence of disease, and begin focusing on other points of dissatisfaction. So it's a losing battle to try to imagine a world without problems, as humans define them. That's why through Exaltation, the new creator doesn't operate like this, and doesn't even try to. The impulse of creation comes not through a wholesale revision of reality to fix imperfections, but through something more focused, a desire to see something happen which did not happen in the previous creation.

Speaking to why a true paradise can't exist, I already touched on it, but I can go a little deeper. Any universe has to abide by physical laws, much like this one. The laws of physics lead to chemistry which lead to organic life. You can't just have plants and animals pop up out of nothing. That's not how any creation ever worked. They need to evolve slowly, on their own time. Struggle is necessary for evolution. Every generation needs to be tested, and they genetically adapt or fade away. So the struggle is necessary for existence itself. That's why you can't just edit the struggle out of a new universe. It's an understandable desire, but it's naive.

So God doesn't even really view struggle as negative, not the way a human would. These are the problems we are talking about, disease, scarcity of resources, aggression between humans which is just an inherited genetic trait which was useful to their ancestors for survival. None of that can be waved away by any Exalted Creator. In fact, it must be totally embraced. The Exalted Creator is quite at peace with all the struggle in this world. That's why there also can't be such a thing as sin. The whole idea makes no sense. It's a human idea which invariably becomes embedded in a faith as more bindings accumulate during the steel cycle.

Q: Okay, I understand the reasoning now. But this leaves us with Exaltation as something more narrow than what I would have assumed was more wide open. I mean, when you talk of creating a universe, it seems like there are infinite possibilities.

JS: Oh, there are.

Q: Yes, but in this case, Joseph envisioned and then created a universe which was almost exactly the same as ours, but added a story about Jesus coming to America, and all these other stories which elaborated on the tale of Christianity. That's what I mean by narrow.

JS: It is narrow in that sense. It usually is.

Q: Then is that how it is for everybody? They just pick one thing to edit about the circumstances of this planet, because they're drawn to that possibility for some reason, and then they rule as God over that reality, so to speak?

JS: Usually, yes, it is like that for most Exalted Souls. That doesn't mean the average person who is Exalted envisions similar things to Joseph, like an entire alternate history to the way Christianity developed. It was just his calling to be attracted to such an idea. Average people tend to be attracted to ideas which are more relatable. Such as different ways their lives could have gone, things like that.

Q: Then that means the potential for different universes really is exponential. Everybody who imagines their life could have gone better, if each one of those could represent a new reality through Exaltation, then it boggles the mind to imagine how many directions this could go.

JS: Yes. Like I said, the number of universes we are dealing with here is infinite. That's the nature of God. Infinity.

Q: I'm still confused about how this would work for an average person though. Let's say I'm going to be Exalted some day. And I'm going along with my life here, and thinking about all the ways my life could have gone better, like many people do. Maybe I say, wouldn't it be great if I figured out how to become rich in this lifetime? So that plants the seed in my mind for a better universe, and that's the one that gets created when I become Exalted.

But the confusing thing here is, I'm supposed to be the God of that universe. So somehow, I'm simultaneously the God of that universe, but there's also this exact copy of me living in that universe who gets to be rich this time. So which is it? Am I ruling as God, or am I just me all over again, but rich this time?

JS: That's a good question. It's getting at the heart of how Exaltation works. The simple answer is, you'd be both. You'd be the God of that universe, as well as the same person you are now, but having different experiences than you did in your previous life. So you'd go on to be rich and live a very different life. There's a bit of a paradox here. But it's reconciled by the understanding that Exalted Creators of their own universes always assume the form of avatars within those universes to participate in the manifestation. To observe and appreciate it. Otherwise there would be no point to creating it at all.

You'd be living your new life, as differently imagined by your Exalted form, and enjoying the differences in that life with no awareness of anything that happened before in the previous universe. You'd be enjoying your riches, and all the other boons you imagined for yourself. But at some point, the veil of this illusion would be pierced. Something would happen to shift the awareness of your human form enjoying his riches, to suddenly realize why all this was possible. This is always a profound revelation. When this happens, that human body is essentially functioning as an avatar for the Exalted Creator.

Q: I see. So in my next life, I'd do better, at least in material terms. And then I'd suddenly "wake up," so to speak, and remember I was the God who made this universe possible.

JS: Yes.

Q: That's kind of a funny idea to me, because it then means all these other people just happen to be living in my universe. I mean, the one I created in a previous life. And even then, not for any noble reason. It was just a selfish little fantasy of one person, who then died and spawned this whole new reality.

JS: Yes, but that's the way all universes come about. Not many impulses leading to an Exalted Creation would be considered noble, and the very idea of a noble purpose is a flawed and human one. This is just how it works. Over and over, it works like this. It's infinity. Reality is infinite, because God is infinite.

Q: It occurs to me that, in the hypothetical universe I mentioned, where I die and then live again as a rich guy, who also happens to be the Exalted Creator who then wakes up to that fact - so that created universe is extremely similar to this one. Basically identical, up to the point where I'm born and start doing a few different things to become rich. So it's a bit like making a perfect copy of this universe. Except after that, after I become rich, everything flows differently than it did in this universe.

JS: Yes.

Q: So it's like the butterfly effect.

JS: What?

Q: Oh, the principle where a small change somewhere leads to huge changes in the future. Like a butterfly flaps its wings differently when dinosaurs were alive, which triggers so many small changes, that human beings never evolved, or something like that.

JS: Oh, yes. Exactly like that. The small changes made by the impulses of an Exalted Creator lead to enormous changes in the future. Hence these are very different universes we are talking about, in the grand scheme of things.

That is quite true of Joseph's creation. In his universe, everything that happened in the Book of Mormon was literally true, in a historical sense. Jesus appeared in America, and everything followed from that. Since none of that is historical reality in this universe, things have played out this way. But imagine if all that really did happen. We would live in a very different world right now. In fact, the nation of America never would have even been established.

Q: Wow, really?

JS: Yes. This was reported by Joseph in my visions. Since he is the Exalted Creator of the universe where the Book of Mormon is literally true, he also is aware of how history played out after that. America was never settled by Europeans. Well, they tried to. But things went differently.

Q: How differently?

JS: Quite. But the details of that reality aren't important. It's not our universe. It's just one of countless Exalted Creations.

Q: I just now had the thought - I should have had it sooner, but - this means our universe also has an Exalted Creator.

JS: Yes.

Q: Do you know who it is? Or I mean, was? Who the person was who died and became Exalted, and visualized all this?

JS: No.

Q: Joseph didn't tell you?

JS: No. That wasn't part of his message to me. I don't think it's relevant.

Q: But to be clear, it really could have been anyone? Anyone alive today might be living out their revised life, in some better way. They could be rich now, or had the career they wanted, or whatever.

JS: Yes, that's possible. Or it could have been someone like Joseph, who foresaw the story of Jesus as we understand it historically, through the canon of the New Testament. And their Exaltation is what brought this story to life in our universe.

Q: That's an interesting thought. How likely do you think that is?

JS: Just as likely as any other possibility.

Q: But no matter what the truth is, this universe has an avatar somewhere? A person who was living their life however it was envisioned by the creator, who then woke up to the fact that they were the creator all along?

JS: Yes. This universe has at least one incarnation of the creator. Actually, it's much more likely this universe has had countless incarnations of the creator. Because that's how the creator appreciates and engages with Their creation.

Q: But there's no way of knowing who those incarnations are?

JS: Oh, there's definitely a way of knowing who some of them are. You'll never know all, or the vast majority. Most incarnations stay under the radar, just appreciating the manifestation as it is. But some are not under the radar at all. Like Jesus. He's definitely an incarnation of the Exalted Creator.

Q: Jesus is one?

JS: Absolutely.

Q: Wait, so Jesus is in this universe, but you also said Jesus is in Joseph's universe, doing different things. Both are incarnations of the creator?

JS: Yes. Every single instance of Jesus in every universe he appears in is an incarnation of the Exalted Creator. That doesn't mean Jesus is in every universe though. There are plenty of universes so distant in historical deviation, that Jesus is never born. But there are many, many universes where Jesus lives. Many universes that are, let's say, local to this cluster of causality.

Q: This is a lot to take in.

JS: I know. It's a major shift in the way most people perceive our reality. We're so used to the idea that this is all unique, there was only one Jesus, and so on. But this is how it works.

Q: Wait, so now another conclusion is just hitting me. Given what you just said, Jesus is the avatar for the creator of this universe, but he's also the avatar for Joseph's universe too - since Joseph himself is the Exalted Creator of the universe he rules over now, that must mean Joseph himself actually incarnated as Jesus in his reality.

JS: Correct.

Q: The implications of this seem astonishing to me.

JS: How so?

Q: Because when Joseph was alive, he had all these visions which rewrote the history of Jesus, and as you say, he believed in them. He believed for good reason, because they turned out to be true in a future universe of his own creation, so it was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than a view into the past no one else could see. So then he dies, becomes Exalted, creates this universe where everything he envisioned came to pass, and that alone would be remarkable enough for him to discover after his death. But not only that, it turned out that he himself would incarnate as the very Jesus he foresaw in his visions. The one who journeyed to America and had all those experiences, and then directly reshaped the future history of America, and humanity in general. It must have been astounding for him to realize this is what was actually happening, once he understood he incarnated as Jesus.

JS: Yes, it was. This is the incredible thing about Exaltation. It's actually more amazing to consider what it's like to become Exalted in this manner than the more traditional ideas about the subject. The sense of discovery, the feeling that the logic of the universe is all falling into place, and understanding your role in it, it's an unmatched feeling. A sort of unending euphoria in the revelations brought about through numerous incarnations of the creator, which helps square the idea that one really is entering a paradise here, even though the description of the Exalted Creation here seems to conflict with common ideas about what paradise should look like.

Q: I can see that. Okay, but going back to my hypothetical situation. The one where I imagine myself rich, so I become Exalted and create the universe where that's true. And in my new life, I get rich, but I also get the added boon of waking up to the fact that I'm the Exalted Creator as well. From what you just said, that version of me which has woken up, that's only one of many human incarnations I live through. And one of those incarnations is necessarily going to be Jesus too? Because you said he's always an avatar for the creator, in every universe he appears in.

JS: Yes, that's true. The way you described it is exactly how it works.

Q: Then this means, if I become Exalted, no matter what type of alternate reality I envision, if that history includes the story of Jesus, then I'm going to end up being Jesus in that reality? Along with plenty of other incarnations, of course. But being Jesus, that sounds very significant.

JS: It is significant. That's why he's such a significant figure. Along with many others, as you say, but he happens to be one of the most famous incarnations of the creator in this time period, and in this particular cluster of universes which includes him.

Q: I just want to stay with this point for a while, because it fascinates me. I would die, get Exalted, and in one of my incarnations, I would wake up as Jesus and live his whole life. Teach his teachings and whatnot, which, I suppose I would now be qualified to do, since I'm the God of that universe.

JS: Yes.

Q: That means I live through everything he lived through, good and bad? Even his crucifixion?

JS: If his crucifixion is part of the universe you envisioned, or you had no reason to change that part of his story through your Exaltation, then yes, you'd also live through the crucifixion too. But that needs some elaboration, since I'm sure that part of it sounds grim.

Incarnated creators don't register pain and suffering the way typical humans do at all. It just comes across as a sensory experience on par with any other. It technically feels the same, but it isn't unendurable. It's regarded with neutrality, or rather, seen as a necessary function of life. Only mortals who are still confused, still under the veil placed on them by the creator, see pain as something to avoid at all costs, simply because being programmed this way is useful to an organism's survival. When that illusion doesn't hold any sway over a being, such as an incarnated creator, it's really just like any other experience. This is why Jesus was so easily able to take a charitable view toward His own death, and those who were participating in it. It all just came across as play to Him - something which needed to be acted out fully, because it's a part of history critical to the unfolding of this particular universe. He felt invested in letting it play out that way, or more to the point, had a great deal of love for those events playing out just right, because He was the creator of the reality which demanded those events.

Q: Then his death wasn't even about sacrifice, or dying for our sins. It just happened because it was supposed to?

JS: There are many stories and interpretations of the meaning of His death. But basically, yes, He died because He was supposed to. Because it needed to happen exactly this way for our universe to play out the way it has. So in some sense, if you want to see it that way, it was a meaningful sacrifice, made on the part of the Exalted Creator as incarnated through Jesus. But as I just said, this sacrifice wasn't much for Him to endure. He did it happily, and knew He was destined to His entire life. Of course He knew the moment would come one day. But there was no reason to fear it, as it could not possibly be interpreted as a negative event by Him.

Q: So it's a bit like, to name a funny example, if I said I was going to make a sacrifice for mankind, or to ensure this universe goes as it should. But all that sacrifice ended up being was, let's say, me taking a little walk in the light rain. Like, the least possible inconvenience. Maybe almost pleasant, from a certain perspective.

JS: Sure, why not? Either way, dying is never unwelcome or unpleasant no matter how it happens for someone who is the incarnation of the creator.

Q: I'm still considering the ramifications of this idea. That if I die and become Exalted, and have all my earthly desires satisfied in the next universe I create through Exaltation, that somewhat makes sense on a cosmic level. Like being rewarded in the afterlife, which is often what religions promise. But not only do I get rewarded with a version of reality where I get to be rich and all that, but it's almost like there's an unexpected bonus. I get to live as Jesus too, and however many other incarnations of the creator there are, whether hundreds or millions, whatever it is. It's just a funny surprise I guess. It's the last thing I would expect.

JS: Well, yes, but someone had to be Jesus. Think of it that way. Someone had to be Him. He's the human incarnation of the Exalted Creator of this universe, and any other He shows up in. So why not you? Why wouldn't you be Him too, once you too become the Exalted Creator of another reality which contains Him? It makes perfect sense to me. But I understand you're new to this. I've had a lot of time to process what Joseph revealed to me.

Q: I can see that. Another thing I wonder is, if Jesus is the human form of the Exalted Creator, wouldn't he have said something about all this?

JS: He surely tried to, but he would have used the concepts of the time period to communicate His message. See, He, much like Joseph, needed to frame things in a way that wouldn't alienate His followers. So a lot of this becomes coded. Terms like "kingdom of heaven" get used, instead of talking about new universes. It's all there if you read between the lines. There's also the fact that there were no tape recorders during His time. We only have whatever made it into the New Testament to go on, but He definitely said a lot more than that during His lifetime.

Q: It raises another question for me. Was it only Jesus? I mean, you said there were a lot of incarnations. People who went under the radar, as you said. But what about other major religious figures? Like Buddha?

JS: Buddha wasn't an incarnation of the creator. He was different, more like us. He was on the path of enlightenment, and is said to have achieved it and taught about it. That's just what becoming primed for Exaltation means. Primed is my term for it, which I got from Joseph.

Q: Okay, this is fitting together better then, for me at least. The eastern idea of enlightenment is just getting primed for Exaltation?

JS: Yes.

Q: But they don't talk about it. Exaltation, I mean. The eastern traditions, Buddhists and others with similar views, they don't speak of creating new realities after death, do they?

JS: I would take another look at those traditions. Again, it's all about reading between the lines. Try to peer through the bindings of steel which gather around every faith and obscure what they're really trying to say. Steel cycles happen to all faiths, both eastern and western.

Q: Then if Buddha was just a typical person who became primed for Exaltation, that opens this back up to what it actually means to become primed, and how to get there. Can I ask a few questions about that now?

JS: Yes.

Anchor 2

3. Becoming Primed

Q: You said a person doesn't become an Exalted Creator unless they die after becoming primed.

JS: That's right.

Q: But this doesn't happen to everyone?

JS: No.

Q: But you said it does happen to a lot of people?

JS: Yes. Joseph said it happens to quite a significant number of people. Which makes sense to me, because once you understand how Exaltation works, and how it's the mechanism for reality perpetuating itself, iterating and evolving, it would make sense that many people become primed, thereby leading to many new variations on the current universe.

Q: But Joseph didn't say how many? As in, what portion of the population?

JS: No, he didn't get that specific. But I got the sense that it was a very substantial number. It just didn't sound like a very exclusive thing. More like a function of nature. I say this because I've seen how it goes, with the steel cycles of any given faith. The idea that a cosmic reward is some exclusive thing is always a byproduct of steel bindings accumulating. They always like to say, do things our way, and exactly our way, or you don't get the reward.

Q: Or worse, you might go to hell.

JS: Yes, exactly. Any sort of punishment, like going to hell, or getting reincarnated as something undesirable, those are always steel bindings. Elements which are added later to assert structure and control. It's natural for steel cycles to introduce these things, and unavoidable as I said, but it's still total nonsense. There are no cosmic punishments.

Q: In this case, with being primed, assuming we call that a cosmic reward of some sort, that still leaves people who are dying unprimed, right? While that may not be a punishment, it still sounds like a lesser outcome than becoming primed. What happens to those people?

JS: I wouldn't call it a lesser outcome. It's all part of nature running its course. The unprimed don't lead to new universes. They aren't meant to be the relay vessels for the iteration of creation. What happens to them is difficult to describe, but it's by no means bad. You can think of it as the unprimed person's soul merging back into the consciousness of the current Exalted Creator. There are finer points to make here, but that's essentially what happens.

Q: I see. So they return to the source?

JS: Remember, the current manifestation is a lot like a dream the Exalted Creator is having. So everything in it, people, animals and so on, are just dream figures in the creator's dream. They don't have any reality independent of the dreamer. So when an unprimed dream figure dies, it's like the Exalted Creator is having a very localized experience of waking up from that dream. It was never real, there were never any actual problems, and everything has always been fine. And the Exalted Creator in Their infinite capacity has this experience repeatedly. That's exactly what it wanted through the condition of Exaltation.

Q: So that means people, or these dream figures, who go on to become primed and then die, they're different somehow? When they die, that's not just the current creator having the feeling that it's waking up?

JS: No. Those particular dream figures have evolved enough to iterate creation through their own Exaltation process, and advance the manifestation by one more step forward. The new creation is designed in accordance with whatever the strongest impulses were of the primed dream figure.

Q: It all comes down to desires then.

JS: Desires, attraction, faith, whatever it is, that's what shapes the next creation. It's different for everybody. Some desires among the primed are very strong, which leads to a very specific type of creation. Some desires are very weak, or nonexistent within the primed figure. In that case, all bets are off. The next universe can be anything, even realities which diverge enormously from this one.

Q: Oh, so the magnitude of desire is a factor in the reality shaped by Exaltation?

JS: It's almost the only factor. And it mostly has to do with the moment in someone's life when they become primed.

Q: How so?

JS: If you're primed only a moment before death, that's when the desire impulse is at its strongest. Because there's some sense that death is imminent. As in, only a few seconds from now you'll be gone. And this urgency is not only what provides the energy for the big shift in consciousness that makes one primed, it also crystallizes the full desire impulse of the person into a very clear vision of what they want to see through Exaltation.

This is what happened with Joseph. He was only primed a few seconds before his death. He said it happened as he was falling out of the window, just after being assassinated. This is what he said. As he was falling, he knew it was over. So there was a sudden shift. He was primed for just a brief moment before death, and that concentrated everything he was most passionate about into a single desire. That desire was to understand the truth of his visions, which he worked so hard in life to share with everyone. So through his Exaltation, he got to experience a universe where all of that was real.

Q: Then you're saying the strength of the desire shaping Exaltation is a function of how close to death you are when you get primed?

JS: Yes.

Q: So those who get primed much earlier in life, such as Buddha, end up having weak desires upon their death, and Exaltation doesn't work the same way? It's a less focused type of universe they create? Where anything goes?

JS: Basically, that's right. Someone like Buddha, who was primed early, had so many years for his primed condition to influence his life and the way he saw reality. The ones like Buddha, as dream figures in this Exalted Creation, in a sense they woke up early. So their consciousness is very close in nature to the state of our Exalted Creator. This means they don't really want anything. They don't see anything lacking in this manifestation. They see all is well with creation, just as it is.

Q: This actually does sound like it lines up with the teachings of Buddhism pretty well.

JS: Of course. There was no reason for Buddha to teach otherwise. This is how he saw things, through the view of his primed condition, along with living enough years to allow those revelations to fully transform his understanding of reality. This is how everyone is, when they're primed long before death. But I should note, this is actually quite rare.

Q: So being primed seconds before death is common, whereas being primed early in life is rare?

JS: Yes. The former case is extremely common. The latter case is rare. But it does happen sometimes. But others who are like Buddha just aren't as famous as he is.

Q: Kind of like how there are many incarnations of the Exalted Creator, like Jesus, but they aren't as famous as him? Flying under the radar, as you said.

JS: Yes.

Q: This makes me wonder - and I realize you already answered this, but - it just seems natural to wonder how one becomes primed. Is it possible to do something to achieve this deliberately? I think you said it wasn't earlier.

JS: That's right. It's not possible. It's not even really an achievement. It's something that happens to humans according to their destiny and programming. It's a development built into the natural unfolding of this particular Exalted Creation, which can't go any other way than how it's going.

Q: Then it's a matter of predestination.

JS: Yes. Predetermined by the Exalted Creator.

Q: But it certainly does seem as if Buddha was trying to become enlightened, and then finally succeeded, doesn't it? That's how the story goes.

JS: The story of Buddha is very illuminating. It actually shows how this works very well. He tried very hard to become enlightened, or primed, for much of his life. He practiced strict mediation methods and everything. Nothing worked. It was only when he relaxed those methods, practicing what they call the Middle Way, was there a breakthrough. But the Middle Way didn't cause his enlightenment. Nothing caused it, or rather, nothing he did caused it.

He was always going to become primed at that exact moment. He was destined to. All of that effort to achieve it was a lot of fuss over nothing. But the fact that he was trying was an indication that he was very interested in the subject. He was naturally drawn to it, because part of him knew he was always meant for it. The effort was an expression of that, not the cause of anything. When he started to relax his methods, that also did not cause anything, but it was an indication he was getting close to being primed. That's how it works. The veil begins to lift, but only when it's time.

Q: Then if there's no way for a person to deliberately become primed, and you have no control over this particular aspect of your fate, what is there to do?

JS: Exactly. There's no use trying to manipulate your cosmic destiny as one of the dream figures of this Exalted Creation. So you might as well relax. Focus on the other parts of your life you care about. But note, if you're powerfully drawn to this subject like Buddha was, you won't be able to help it. You'll just keep thinking about it, maybe you'll try things, or hop around from one spiritual practice to another. But let's be clear. None of this will have any effect. You'll either be primed later in life, or you won't. When and if you do isn't up to you.

Q: That doesn't leave much room for all the stuff religions usually are concerned with. Like telling people what they need to do to get whatever spiritual rewards are promised.

JS: That's right. The accumulation of those things are steel bindings. They come because people inevitably ask about them. People really want hard answers. They want a roadmap to either salvation or enlightenment. If it's not offered, then they'll go somewhere it is offered. Hence, the administrators of faith are more than happy to offer them, in order to keep the faithful bound up in a particular movement. So movements invariably drift in this direction.

Q: The steel cycle.

JS: Yes. You can't stop it. That's why I'm not really suggesting anyone try to stop it here. Maybe delay it for a while at best. But I'm at least being clear about this up front, to help people understand what's happening, and what's inevitable.

Q: You're beginning a restoration movement with a warning that all such movements will stray from the truth, by necessity. And you're saying this, I guess, to temper whatever disappointment may come whenever it happens?

JS: I guess you could say that. But mainly I'm just saying it because it's the truth.

Q: Can I ask a personal question then?

JS: Sure.

Q: Are you primed?

JS: I don't see much advantage to saying either way. Because whether someone is primed or not carries the risk of being a signifier of status. It's very easy to see how later, during the steel cycle, people could divide followers into primed and unprimed people, with the primed enjoying special privileges and considered to be wiser, full of deeper insights, or maybe infallible. And where there is such a status signifier, you'll find a lot of people laying claim to that status who don't actually have it.

Instead I think it's a better idea to completely disregard whether a person is primed or not. Don't even think about it, or even wonder if someone is or not. It's not up to them anyway whether they are, and it's not up to you whether you are either.

Q: Right. It seems to me that anyone, whether primed or unprimed, can have a huge impact on the spiritual evolution of humanity. For instance, you say Buddha was primed early in life, continued his teachings, and a massive religion grew out of that tradition. And then there was Joseph, who wasn't primed until just before death, but through his visions he also started a major religious movement.

JS: Yes, it can happen either way.

Q: In other words, you can either be very wise, or very confused, and still start a movement that in some way points to the truth, even if it's disguised. Would you say that described Joseph? Someone who was confused right up until the moment of death?

JS: Oh yes, he was very confused for his entire life. Confused about the nature of his visions, why sometimes they would come but most of the time they wouldn't. But much more than that, he was confused and very distressed about how to bring his vision to the people, while holding everything together under real world constraints and conflicts. How do you convince people to listen to you, when you know your visions are legitimate, but not everyone will believe you? You have to start coming up with all sorts of tricks that seem deceitful, and the ends start justifying the means.

Q: Like saying you got your information from golden plates which only you can read?

JS: Exactly. It's laughable on its face, but it did the trick. Enough people believed, so they followed him. His methods and means of communicating were very much of their time period. People back then would in no way be convinced by any of the answers I'm providing here.

Q: No, I wouldn't think so.

JS: But the downside of that was, his movement became fraught with deceptions and conflict almost immediately. It was an uphill battle for him to establish his church after that. He made a lot of enemies, had to keep moving around the country, dodging persecution and so on.

Q: So his restoration began with a honey cycle which lasted, say, virtually no time at all, and immediately entered its steel cycle while he was still alive?

JS: Yes, and that cycle has continued to this day, though has undergone many evolutions. But this is inevitable when someone like Joseph - that is, someone who isn't primed or an incarnation of the creator - tries to do something like this.

Q: Start a religion?

JS: Yes. For instance, Buddhism didn't accumulate its steel bindings until after Buddha's death. The teachings of Jesus didn't either. It was years later, when the teachings were handed off to new generations of church leadership.

Q: One more question about becoming primed. Do you think I will be primed someday?

JS: No one can know for sure. But you're hearing about the subject. So I think it's likely. Hearing about it signifies attraction to the idea on your part, at a deeper level. If it's really meant for you, you probably won't be able to stop thinking about it. But it's impossible to say when it will happen. I wouldn't worry about it.

Anchor 3

4. Honey and Steel

Q: You've mentioned honey and steel cycles many times. These seem like important concepts in your teaching.

JS: They are.

Q: And they were told to you by Joseph?

JS: Yes, in my later dreams.

Q: This was after he explained the truth of Exaltation?

JS: His discourse was all running together. The concepts were all related. I later understood that Joseph in my dreams was not a typical dream vision. It was very similar to his own dream about Jesus. That Jesus was reporting directly from the universe Joseph would create through Exaltation. My dreams are also coming from Joseph's universe.

Q: I see. So unlike Joseph, you are not having future visions from your own Exalted Creation? They're from his?

JS: Yes. In that creation, Joseph has countless incarnations, such as Jesus and many other figures. But the incarnation speaking to me through my dreams was an incarnation of an ordinary man who was very much like Joseph was here on Earth. Through awakening, and realizing his incarnated nature, he recalled all of Joseph's memories from our universe, and spent many years reflecting on his previous life. Such as his faults, mistakes, redeeming qualities, everything like that.

Q: So, in making sense of his previous life, this incarnation of Joseph had some new ideas to report? Things like honey and steel cycles?

JS: Yes, exactly. These were metaphors he came up with to convey the inevitabilities of spiritual movements, their cyclical nature as they oscillate between the brief periods of truth and clarity, and the long periods of stifling rigidity, falsehoods, profiteering and many other such perceived flaws commonly associated with religions.

Q: So in a way, he was providing Mormonism with a sort of postmortem, from the afterlife? Or, not afterlife, exactly. From his own Exalted Creation?

JS: Yes.

Q: It sounds as if he was being self-critical.

JS: Oh he was, very much so. But without remorse or lament. As an Exalted Creator, he was way beyond all that. Through his self-critique, he was fully at peace with the absolute necessity of the way everything went, and everything he did. It could have been no other way, because his own actions were already written by our own Exalted Creator. Not only that, but as I said before, the recession of a faith movement's honey cycle into its steel cycle is inevitable.

Q: Why did he choose these terms? Just poetic license?

JS: One time he made reference to the metal plates you mentioned earlier. Of course the existence of these plates has always been total nonsense, and for the most part, even a child could suspect the fabrication. They were golden plates that only Joseph was allowed to see. A handful of witnesses supposedly saw them, but by this time such figures were personally invested in the fraud. There were no plates, as any reasonable historian who studies the subject will tell you.

But they were quite relevant to the Joseph of my dreams nonetheless. He believed he was intuitively gravitating to engraved metal as a symbol of the deceptions he suddenly realized were needed to continue advancing his grift - they represented a hardening and codification of these deceits. One of the first bindings meant to ensnare people in his movement. There were doubters of his vision, so to continue convincing people, such tactics needed to be contrived. If it wasn't metal plates, it was something else, whatever it took to keep his followers enthralled and believing.

So Joseph, after his Exaltation, felt metal was a good metaphor for similar religious bindings of any sort. Deceptions, rules, wild claims to be taken on trust alone and to test the faith of the followers - all of these he called steel bindings. They build a cage around those once attracted to the honey of truth, and by the time they find themselves trapped, the honey is gone.

Q: And the honey? Where did that idea come from?

JS: It's a common idea in religious scripture to associate divine truth with nectar or such. But there was a moment when Joseph recalled his original vision of Jesus, and described a golden aura. It reminded him of honey.

Q: I know you said it's impossible for a honey cycle to last forever. The steel cycle is necessary in some way, so it's inevitable. Still, part of me can't help but wonder if that shouldn't be the point of human endeavor? To recognize this duality of honey and steel cycles, and strive to keep the honey cycle alive as long as possible. Because that way people benefit from the truth for the longest period of time. Is there anything wrong with this type of thinking?

JS: No, not really. You can always try to make anything happen if it strikes you as a worthy goal, and since this has all been written already by our Exalted Creator, you wouldn't be able to stop yourself from trying even if you wanted to. So go ahead, try to make the honey cycle of the next Mormon restoration last as long as possible. How will you do it?

Q: Well, to start, I'd frequently remind followers that honey and steel cycles exist, and point as often as I could to the things which represent steel bindings when they start to show up. Such as distortions, profiteering, complex administrative structures that start manipulating people into following increasingly strict rules. Things like that. And hopefully alertness to the problem will make people more resistant to the problem for longer.

JS: Yes, "hopefully" is the right word. And I do think this is why Joseph made a point of conveying these ideas, in the hope that others would take to heart the lessons you just mentioned.

But what came along with his delivery of the honey and steel concepts was this note of caution I keep reminding you of. Which is that there's essentially nothing you can do to stop a steel cycle from setting in. You can delay for a while, maybe. But take some of the examples you mentioned–

So you want to discourage profiteering within the new movement? Sounds great, but how does the organization subsidize itself? How do the ones putting in the most work make a living? How do you pay for building and maintaining churches? Eventually money makes its way in, and the most effective means of fundraising over time get rewarded through repetition. At that point, who is to say which are the spiritually elevated means of collecting revenue, and which are the crass, exploitative means which surely count as steel bindings? It's hard to say for sure. But Joseph's answer is very simple - all of these methods count as steel bindings.

Therefore, in this sense, steel bindings shouldn't even be seen as negative, or some great evil corrupting a movement which needs to be thwarted. That corruption, if it can even be called that, will be addressed in due time with later restoration movements, or honey cycles. But for the time being, all steel bindings represent a natural part of a cyclical process. They are part of the Exalted Creator's plan.

Q: Then the teaching here, or this transcript of it, represents the honey cycle of a restoration movement? We're at square one, so to speak, and no steel bindings have set in yet?

JS: These answers you are recording barely even count as square one. The original scripture does not represent the honey cycle of a movement. The initial spark of inspiration by early followers is what launches the cycle, and then more people come. With them, they inevitably bring the bindings of steel. They can't help it. Perhaps slowly at first, but they are always inherent in any significant gathering of people dedicated to a spiritual movement. They will want to know many practical points, such as how to organize, where to congregate, how donations are processed, and much more than that. They will begin asking more questions about the faith itself, and many will not accept the idea that their questions exceed the scope of the teaching. They want to know about morality, how to live, what to do. They'll keep asking until the early administrators figure out how to provide answers which satisfy them.

It's for this reason that the early administrators of a faith are usually the ones who introduce the first steel bindings. It's not always the case that the original prophet encodes those bindings in the early text, although in Joseph's case, he provided plenty of his own. Note that Joseph and his early entourage of administrators continued tacking on new revelations years after publishing the Book of Mormon, in the form of another book, Doctrines and Covenants. These bindings were deemed necessary in response to the early needs of the movement. But they have nothing to do with the truth. It's just more fiction.

Q: Are there any early administrators for the restoration movement that will arise from your teachings?

JS: None at this time, unless you'd like to count yourself among them.

Q: Me? Would this transcription count as a form of administration?

JS: Yes, a very early one. The kind which produces a text. The more complex forms of administration, far more likely to introduce steel bindings, may come later.

Q: Is that what you want?

JS: I don't want anything. Joseph has made it clear to me everything is being taken care of. Nothing is out of place.

Anchor 4

5. Nature of the Exalted

Q: I can understand why Joseph put such emphasis on these honey and steel metaphors. I see the value of it in preparing people to administrate a new restoration movement responsibly. But I don't want to lose sight of what is really amazing to me about your visions, and that's the topic of Exaltation. Can we explore that a little more?

JS: Yes.

Q: I did a little reading on the traditional Mormon view of Exaltation. Now that you've spoken so much on the honey and steel cycles, a lot of these features jump out at me as obvious steel bindings.

JS: Definitely. The church's canon on Exaltation is a very skewed version of what it actually is. You're absolutely right, the divergences from the truth lie in the bindings the concept has accumulated.

Q: Even through the brief Wikipedia article, you get a good sense of the differences. I wonder if you'd mind if I compared these notes with your view of it?

JS: Not at all.

Q: The article says–

The LDS Church teaches that those who receive exaltation will:

live eternally in the presence of God the Father and Jesus Christ;
become gods;
be united eternally with their righteous family members and will be able to have eternal offspring;
receive a fulness of joy; and;
be given everything that God the Father and Jesus Christ have—all power, glory, dominion, and knowledge.

What's your response to each? Let's start with the first - live eternally in the presence of God the Father and Jesus Christ.

JS: This one is ambiguous enough to call reasonably true. The Exalted Creator lives in the presence of God for the simple reason that They are that presence. They become that presence through Exaltation, or rather, reassume Their original nature as that presence. In fact, there has never been anything but this presence, except through the deception caused by the veil of each Exalted Creator's dream.

Q: And the one about Jesus? I would guess the Exalted Creator doesn't technically live eternally in the presence of Christ, because They will eventually incarnate as the literal Christ figure at some point, assuming Jesus still exists in that creation?

JS: Correct. Jesus is not really a divine presence, except as a figure of speech. He's a flesh and blood human in all realities He occupies. He's an avatar for the Exalted Creator, one of many.

Q: Okay, and the second point - Exalted people become gods?

JS: Also true, but what is imagined is misleading. Again, there is no disembodied God floating out there in space, or in any celestial realm, independently observing the creation. The Exalted Creator needs a physical instrument to observe the creation. A human body - an avatar.

Q: And this one - be united eternally with their righteous family members and will be able to have eternal offspring?

JS: This one is not true. It's an obvious steel binding.

Q: You mean it was introduced by later administrators of the faith to be appealing to followers, and keep them bound to the church?

JS: Yes. But there is possibly an element of truth here. If the vision of the Exalted is to live in an ideal version of the universe which includes spending time with Their family members, then that's what will happen. That's the life that will be lived through one incarnation, until the time comes when the Exalted wakes up through that incarnation and remembers everything. It's in this sense that Exalted Creators do quite often spend time with the loved ones they left behind.

Q: Then there's "receive a fulness of joy," which seems both vague and true enough to me not to bother challenging. And finally, the Exalted will be given everything that God the Father and Jesus Christ have—all power, glory, dominion, and knowledge. Is that true?

JS: Again, true enough. It just depends on what you mean by that. The Exalted is given everything that God currently has, because the God being referred to here is our own universe's Exalted Creator. So naturally, a new Exalted Creator will assume all characteristics of the previous one. Whether these characteristics include power, glory, and dominion is a matter of interpretation. But there is no doubt at all that knowledge is included - it is the supreme knowledge.

Q: I see. That means the canon understanding of Exaltation isn't even that far off.

JS: Not really. Most of the troublesome bindings have to do with eligibility.

Q: Yes, I was getting to that. There are these requirements one has to meet called "saving ordinances." They're listed as–

Baptism;
Confirmation;
Melchizedek priesthood ordination (for men);
Endowment, including washing and anointing;
Celestial marriage;

Is there any merit to these at all?

JS: None whatsoever. These are total fabrications, and represent steel bindings that are as obvious as they come.

Q: Right. So the later administrators of the church realized they needed to ritualize the Exaltation qualification process, in order to assure various forms of compliance among followers.

JS: Exactly.

Q: And this isn't even getting into some of the discrimination practices when it came to such ordinances, like banning Blacks until 1977, and banning LGBT couples to this day.

JS: Yes, such measures tend to be the harshest bindings which accumulate during a movement's steel cycle. It comes down to administrative expediency. Because so many people were racist in those days, if the church showed any liberal tendencies, then too many followers would leave. So it seemingly became necessary for the church to codify the racism of their followers in order to hold the movement together. This pattern is very common, and also does the most to drain the life from the original spirit of any restoration.

Q: So currently, it strikes me that the church is making people jump through all these hoops to achieve Exaltation, when none of this has any bearing on their destiny at all. And yet, given statements you made earlier, it seems to me anyone in this movement is still a likely candidate for Exaltation, because you mentioned that attraction to the very idea of Exaltation is a strong indicator that you were meant for it. Am I correct here?

JS: That's the way I see it too.

Q: So while living, they'll go through the motions of ordinances and all that, only to discover later that Exaltation wasn't what they thought it was, and none of that was necessary?

JS: Yes. But that's not unique to them. Everyone is surprised by the way it works once the true understanding of Exaltation reaches them - once they are primed.

Q: And again, there is no way to experience one's own Exaltation except through the incarnation of a body in the new creation, such that the Exalted has a mind and senses to work with.

JS: Yes.

Q: So life as an Exalted Creator, even though you're technically God, it's still a very human life in an experiential sense.

JS: Exactly.

Q: How many incarnations can an Exalted Creator expect to have in Their creation, approximately?

JS: It's impossible to give a rough figure. It's as many as the Exalted Creator desires, though They have no knowledge or understanding of this desire until They notice an incarnation has taken place - by looking through the eyes and living the life of that vessel. It could be only a few, or it could be countless. Anything is possible.

Q: And one thing that still boggles my mind is, every time a new creation appears which includes Earth, the entire historical population comes along with it. Almost as if those people are all copied from the previous creation, if the two universes are very similar. But those "copies," as you say, are dream figures, dreamt by the Exalted Creator. And on death, the dream figures will either become Exalted if they're primed, or merge back into the consciousness of the Exalted, in some manner.

JS: Yes.

Q: The mind boggling part to me about this is how exponential it all is. Our universe must have millions, or maybe billions of people who are destined for Exaltation. And each of those will create a universe, most of which will probably be similar to ours, and bring along a copy of everyone alive on Earth, give or take.

JS: Correct.

Q: That's a lot of people! It doesn't take a mathematician to see that this is racking up a billion to the billionth power, to the billionth power, and so on.

JS: That's the nature of infinity. You can imagine numbers unfathomably enormous. And yet, you have barely even begun to count.

Q: But it also seems to me that Exaltation is fundamentally a very human thing. So it makes me wonder how it got started. Was there some original Exalted Creator, and if so, where did they come from?

JS: Technically there is no origin to any of this, because time doesn't really work that way outside the very limited context of a universe which includes spacetime as a conceptual construct. But I understand what you're getting at. The progression of universes as a product of Exaltation is evolutionary. That's why universes appear to be so complex, through human eyes. Humanity itself is a function of that complexity.

But there are other universes upon which the kind we're familiar with were built. More simplistic universes which aren't perceived through the lens of logic, reason, and everything else that makes the perception of conceptual reality possible. These realities are perceived in a murkier way through the dream figures of that creation.

Q: Such as the way lesser life forms perceive things on Earth? Bugs, lizards and such?

JS: Yes. Such vessels can't mentally stabilize their reality nearly as coherently as a human, so those universes themselves are fundamentally incoherent. Almost as if they're blurry, in a sense. They are dim emergent realities which are necessary building blocks leading to our much sharper realities. It is not even quite right to say that such realities have Exalted Creators. The iterative creative force is more primal. But it is still the same God behind that force, just as it's the same God behind every Exalted Creator. In actuality, there is no division here, even though we draw many conceptual distinctions.

Q: This is also very interesting. It sounds to me like you're hinting at a metaphysical blueprint describing how all creation works, which dates back before the time of Exalted Creators. Given that these realities are infinite, and one necessarily leads into another, it sounds pretty complicated. Like an entire manual could be written on how it works.

JS: Maybe that's so, but I wouldn't be the one to write it. I don't have such detailed answers, only what's been recalled through dreams, and pieced together through my own inferences. Besides, this level of minutia is getting away from the point. In my dreams, Joseph would often say this if I was getting too curious about tangential matters. A deeper fascination with the lore of a spiritual tradition among the faithful is one common trap which leads to many steel bindings. An obsession with needing to know every detail creates a demand for such answers, administrators are pressured to provide them, and so they do. Answers become canonized, the lore becomes very complex, and it supplies additional fodder for gatekeeping and ritualization - this is how steel bindings become fortified.

Q: Then maybe my next point of curiosity is misguided.

JS: What is it?

Q: It occurred to me when I was considering the vast number of dream figures being created with every Exaltation, and how exponential it was. Billions of Exalted humans, each dreaming of new Earths with billions of new dream figures in their dreams. That's just on Earth. But what about life on other planets, assuming there is any? Do Exalted Creators populate the entire universe with alien dream figures too? Wouldn't that make everything even more staggeringly exponential than I was imagining?

JS: You're right, in that this is a very tangential topic which leads one down a rabbit hole that's getting far away from the thrust of the teaching. Points like this actually did come up with Joseph, and he was always quick to remind me that sometimes the best and most truthful answer is, "Don't burden yourself with such concerns."

But he also often made the point that many people attracted to a movement will never take "Don't worry about it" for an answer. They need to know. A tradition demonstrating that it can stand up to the rigors of such interrogation is what they need to affirm to themselves that the teaching has merit. So they apply pressure to the teaching, as if they are playing the role of a tempering process when forging steel. And this is exactly the role they are playing, by providing such pressure. They are introducing new bindings. But the process is quite innocent. Few would say that being curious and asking questions represents the cynical side to the evolution of a faith. It happens naturally and in a spirit of good faith, but bindings follow nonetheless.

That said, there are some answers to your question. It's just that many wouldn't find them too satisfying, because it requires establishing some counterintuitive fundamentals.

Q: The question of aliens?

JS: Yes. Before I address whether there is life elsewhere in the universe, we need to establish what a universe actually is.

A universe is not a vast expanse of space and time, full of stars and planets. That's a conceptual abstraction of what it is, as understood by a human mind. A universe is actually an infinitesimal sliver of infinite consciousness. Its medium is experiential, not physical. There is no true physicality or objectivity, only the perception of such ideas happening within the singular, infinite field of consciousness, scattered out through a self-prompted illusion of infinite multiplicity - that is, the many individual points of perception it appears to subdivide itself into. Humans and everything else.

So a single universe can only be said to be what is perceived through an interrelated network of such points of perception. Necessarily, this network's scope is bound by the limits of the information shared within the network. If some other hypothetical network "out there" in space never shares any meaningful information with this network, it is functionally not part of this universe.

In the case of these hypothetical aliens, they are so far away, we never engage with them. Not for the entire span of human life or alien life. We may see the distant flickering of their sun, but that information amounts to a tiny pinhole of light - hardly anything. It's not enough to patch two conscious networks together. Therefore, the two networks literally do not exist with respect to each other - they are in different universes. But this is the type of logic the human mind really struggles with.

Q: I see. So that actually does answer my question, in terms of the exponentiality of Exaltation. There are natural limits to it, because all these aliens out there, whether they really exist or not, are out of range. So they don't count as part of our universe, even though technically we all share the same physical stage, space and time? Which are just abstractions, you said, and don't even truly exist as we perceive them?

JS: Exactly.

Q: But suppose aliens made contact with us? Or a flying saucer came to Earth and told us all about their world?

JS: Then the ambiguity would collapse, and suddenly Earth and the alien world would both be part of the same universe, and subject to the iterative creation rules of Exaltation.

Q: So aliens don't exist, until suddenly they do? Once making contact? And once they do, it was like they existed all along?

JS: Reasoning like this is hard for most people to accept, but that is exactly how it works. These principles are better understood through a study of quantum mechanics, which are notoriously counterintuitive. Many scientists have resisted the conclusions pointed to by quantum mechanics, including Einstein. But this is how reality works. It's the nature of consciousness itself. Things have no reality at all, until they become known through any given point of perception. This includes subatomic particles, alien worlds, and entire universes.

Q: I can see what you mean about going down a rabbit hole.

JS: The moment you begin speaking of quantum mechanics in a spiritual teaching, you start losing people. The more you deal in nuanced answers which provide the sharpest insights into the way things actually work, the more you risk alienating the faithful. Most aren't suited to processing ideas like this, and find the insinuation that things don't meaningfully exist unless observed to be very uncomfortable, solipsistic, what have you. Consciousness, through its own iterative Exaltation process, is quite good at building illusions to enable its own limited faculties of perception. Its many points of perception - these dream figures - are the products of these illusions, and are very resistant to having the illusion pierced by such discourse. In a sense, they were designed to resist the truth.

And so they become the very agents which transform honey into steel. They, through pressure on the administrators, surround the teachings with bindings. They reject answers they find unpalatable, demand substitutions, and are usually accommodated. But there is nothing wrong with this. It is the way of manifestation, the only way it can be.

As such, it is just as often that bindings are introduced through subtraction from a teaching, as it is they're introduced through addition of rigid ordinances. Sometimes you'll hear about apocrypha being stripped from religious texts, because it didn't suit the purposes of administrators at the time. Many truthful statements made by Jesus surely never made it into the New Testament, because sometimes even He was losing the crowd.

If this text you're compiling does indeed spark a honey cycle, soon followed by the dawn of its steel cycle, then administrators may be faced with the challenge of what to do with all this "nonsense" about quantum mechanics. Should it continue to be taught, while they watch the faithful fritter away in boredom and frustration? Should it be downplayed, reframed, or omitted entirely? These are the difficulties with the administration of a steel cycle. The administration is the steel cycle. It's what codifies the bindings.

But it should also put any future administrators at ease to understand that downplaying any core ideas to a teaching which are not helpful to the propagation of that teaching is no tragedy. It happens constantly, is a factor critical to any steel cycle, and steel cycles are essential to the existence of religion itself. The faithful are not showing up to hear about quantum mechanics, aliens, or the most nuanced appreciation of consciousness itself, which is unknowable to the human mind anyway.

The faithful are struggling. They suffer, they're anxious, they want remedies to the suffering, they want answers they understand and resonate with, they want their anxiety eased with promises of a reality after death, they want structure and order, they want direction and leadership, they want to be told what it is they can do to make a better life and a better world.

The core teachings conveyed to me through Joseph do not have all these answers. Providing such answers would run counter to the truth of his teachings. Yet these answers will inevitably present themselves through later administration. They have to.

But it's not the purpose of a movement's honey cycle to be concerned with such answers. The only concern is the truth. The fewer the words used to convey any truth, the truer it is. The highest truth is told with no words at all.

Jebediah Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author, his agents, or his foundation. Interview conducted and edited by Jacob Davis.

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